While the Union government champions slogans like the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, the ground reality is that a UP government hostel built for scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) girls in Nandgram, Ghaziabad, never properly materialised beyond the paperwork. 

The UP government’s Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe Hostel in Nandgram, Ghaziabad, was inaugurated on January 15, 2011, during the tenure of former Chief Minister Mayawati. However, the girls’ hostel remains vacant. While some students were accommodated toward the end of Mayawati's term, “they could stay for only a few months before relocating to another hostel in Sahibabad due to poor security and the absence of basic amenities,” according to Dharam Singh Negi, caretaker of an adjacent hostel for SC/ST boys. 

Since then, the building has remained vacant. Neither the subsequent Samajwadi Party government that took office in 2012 nor the BJP government in power since 2017 has made the hostel operational. Things got so bad that in 2020-21, local authorities had proposed converting the building into a detention centre for foreign nationals living illegally in the state without valid documents, constructing seven large halls to house detainees.

However, widespread protests from students, Dalit organisations, and Mayawati forced officials to abandon the plan, leaving the building in limbo once again. When Newslaundry visited the former girls' hostel, we found a scene rife with neglect – a dilapidated structure overrun with weeds and bushes, and its doors secured by rusted locks. Students from the adjacent boys' hostel offered a stark assessment – “the building now houses only snakes, not students”. 

Newslaundry even found the boys' hostel in a deplorable condition, and that any cleaning or repair work was done by students residing there using their own money and resources. Even for basic necessities, the students pool their money to make arrangements. They claimed they spent Rs 44,000 on an inverter for the library, Rs 5,656.92 on Wi-Fi, and Rs 2,720 on cleaning supplies and other essentials. Bills for all these expenses are also available.

Surprisingly, according to a board displayed at the gate of the same hostel, approximately Rs 3 crore was recently spent on repairs and beautification of the boys' hostel. 

Questioning the expenditure, one of the students asked, “If crores of rupees were spent, why is the situation on the ground so deplorable?”

Watch.

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